Report: Apple to announce MacBook refresh in June

Trent Nouveau, 14th May 2012

Apple is prepping its long-awaited MacBook refresh, which, according to the latest reports, will likely be announced on June 11 during the company's Worldwide Developers Conference.

According to DigiTimes, suppliers are poised to ramp up production of the new lineup in July, with industry sources projecting 50% year-over-year growth in MacBook shipments during 2012.

As AppleInsider's Sam Oliver notes, the MacBook remains on track to outpace the average 8-10 percent growth seen by the rest of the notebook PC market.

The latest iteration of Apple's wildly popular MacBook - powered by Intel's Ivy Bridge processors - is expected to boast a major redesign, making it quite similar in appearance to the thin-and-light MacBook Air.

For example, the Pros are expected to ditch integrated optical drives which will likely be replaced by solid-state flash memory, allowing for a thinner design, faster performance and improved reliability.

Although additional specs have yet to be confirmed, unofficial benchmarks circulating online indicate the new "MacBookPro9,1" OS X 10.8 (Build 12A211) is powered by quad-core 2.70 GHz Core i7-3820QM processor, hitting a GeekBench score of 12,252 - compared to an approximate score of 10,500 for the Core i7-2860QM processor found in the current MacBook Pro.